Urban Hawks

When you watch owls, you have good night and bad nights. Owls can easily disappear out of view or perch for hours. Recently, we’ve had a string of difficult nights.

However, Friday night turned out to be one of the best nights I’ve had watching him. The group watching him had him in view for four hours and he hunted on the ground near his roost tree, caught a Brown Rat (or possibly retrieved a previously caught rat that he cached or had fallen from his roost during the day), ate the Brown Rat. Later, in the same spot the Snowy Owl bathed, he played in the water and took a bath.

It was a wonderful evening.

After a few days of having Flaco being relaxed after fly out, he was very active tonight. He surprised us by active he was visiting a number of “old favorite” perches and some new ones. We lost track of him fairly early, however.

Ofter the last few weeks, Flaco has been in no rush to do anything after fly out. He’s either exploring the construction site, hooting or just perching on a branch. Hunting seems to be low on the list of his priorities before midnight. We know he’s eating well, as we see him with food in the morning and coughing up pellets, but he seems to have shifted to hunting later in the night when the park is closed.

The longer nights may have made him less in a rush to hunt early, but it’s only a guess. However, it does mean that we’re much less likely to seem him hunt or be on the round if we stay to watch him after fly out.

Tonight was one of those quiet nights. He did some hooting in a tree half way from his roost tree and the construction site after fly out, and then went to the construction site before perching for hours in a tree east of the construction site.

Tonight started as a fairly standard night. Flaco flew out of his roost and headed for the constructions site. He made two stops before he was interrupted by Red-tailed Hawk, who chased after him briefly. Flaco ended up hooting from a tree up on the ridge trail before flying to the tree he hooted from last night. Late in the evening he flew out of the tree and we couldn’t relocate him.

I arrived around 9 pm, to find Flaco hooting from a tree along the East Drive. It took me about fifteen minutes to find where in the tree however. He was using two new perches that required me to find just the right angle to see him. After about thirty minutes, he went to a favorite tree in the compost area of the park. For about ten minutes he was lit up by the blinking taillights of a park truck unloading trash. After the truck left, he took off and I couldn’t find him, so I called it a night.